The High Performing Systems for Tomorrow (HPST) was a three-year partnership among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), and a select group of education leaders, including Directors-General, Deputy Ministers, senior advisors, and others, from among a group of…

Aiming to collect various concepts, approaches, and strategies for improving computer science education in K-12 schools, we edited this second special issue of the "ACM TOCE" journal. Our intention was to collect a set of case studies from different countries that would describe all relevant aspects of specific implementations of…

In this essay, Jal Mehta examines the challenges faced by American schooling and the reasons for persistent failure of American school reforms to achieve successful educational outcomes at scale. He concludes that many of the problems faced by American schools are artifacts of the bureaucratic form in which the education sector as a whole was…

Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) offers a flexible, collaborative approach to developing and implementing an assessment of learning outcomes that yields high-quality, nationally relevant data. MTEG is a service that involves ACER staff working closely with each country to develop an assessment program that meets the country's…

This report was produced for the 2012 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Mauritius. Its main purpose is to track the historical progress and likelihood of attainment of Education For All and education-specific Millennium Development Goals while also critically reviewing the methods used to track this progress. The analyses…

Science schooling enjoys high status. Scientific capability is perceived as critical in underpinning economic success in advanced societies. Science achievement, at all levels, has become a global competition in which nations want to be seen to triumph. Governments periodically pay close attention to science education with a view to ensuring it…

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) focuses on young people's ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what…

One of the ultimate goals of policy makers is to enable citizens to take advantage of a globalised world economy. This is leading them to focus on the improvement of education policies, ensuring the quality of service provision, a more equitable distribution of learning opportunities and stronger incentives for greater efficiency in schooling.…